head Command: Tutorial & Examples
Display the first few lines of a file
The head command is a utility that is used to display the first few lines of a text file. It is the opposite of the tail command, which displays the last few lines of a file.
To view the first 10 lines of a file with head, simply type head followed by the name of the file:
head file.txt
You can use the -n flag followed by a number to specify the number of lines to display:
head -n 20 file.txt
This will display the first 20 lines of the file.
head is a simple and useful tool for quickly viewing the beginning of a text file on a Linux system. It is often used in combination with other commands,
such as grep or less, to filter and process the output of those commands before viewing it in head.
Further Reading
- Bash Cookbook by Carl Albing, J.P. Vossen (partner link)
- Wicked Cool Shell Scripts by Dave Taylor, Brandon Perry (partner link)
- Black Hat Bash by Nick Aleks, Dolev Farhi (partner link)
- Bash Pocket Reference by Arnold Robbins (partner link)
- The Linux Command Line by William Shotts (partner link)
- Learning the Bash Shell by Cameron Newham (partner link)
- Mastering Linux Shell Scripting by Mokhtar Ebrahim, Andrew Mallett (partner link)
- Linux Command Line and Shell Scripting Bible by Richard Blum, Christine Bresnahan (partner link)
- Shell Scripting by Jason Cannon (partner link)
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
